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Ra
"Come day and night, I battle the dreaded Apophis. A task suited to me, and me alone. A task which none of my fellow gods can achieve. Why you may ask? Because I am the Sun. The light which shines upon the world. And I have no use for death." Ra is the Egyptian god of the sun and creation. The meaning of the name Ra is uncertain, however if isn't a word that relates to or means "sun" then it could possibly linked to the words 'creator' and 'creative power'. Ra’s daily course was a cycle of death and rebirth. When he fell below the western horizon in the evening, he died and entered the realm of the dead. But every dawn, he was born anew and waxed in majesty and brilliance, enabling all life on earth to flourish along with him. Ra had many different forms but his most common form was that of a falcon or falcon-headed man, especially when the deity being depicted was the composite Ra-Horakhty. But he was also often portrayed as a bearded man, a man with the head of a ram or scarab beetle, a solar disk with or without an encircling cobra as a symbol of power, or the benben, the pyramid-shaped hillock Ra was self-created, and had created everything else as well, either directly or indirectly. The other gods were descendants of, or extensions of, Ra. According to one popular liturgical formula, Ra (and the sun god more generally) was “the one, from whom came millions.” As the primary identity of the sun god, that most widespread and potent symbol for the divine in ancient Egypt, Ra’s status among the gods was virtually without equal. It was only fitting that it would have been he who created the cosmos, ruled it, and provided the model for all later rulers. And one can see how it would have been a great source of prestige for another god to be combined with Ra, the uttermost wellspring of cosmic power. Ra’s power was therefore far greater than that of any of the other gods, and it was inevitable that someone so able in every way would have become their king. His right to this position was sealed by the fact that, since the ancient Egyptians thought that the “natural” order and the political order were two inextricably intertwined aspects of a single, overarching cosmic order, Ra had created the political order and the institution of kingship along with the rest of the cosmos. Even after Ra’s own kingship ended, he remained the head of the divine council, and the ruler ship was passed to his son Shu, then to Shu’s son Geb, then to Geb’s son Osiris, and finally to Osiris’s son Horus. Ra was the model for the human pharaoh. The human pharaoh was even identified as a god himself, and a descendant of Ra. Typically, this took the form of the pharaoh being hailed as the incarnation of Horus. Sometimes the pharaoh was also referred to simply as “Son of Ra.” In either case, the point was that the current pharaoh, and only the current pharaoh, had both the right and the ability to rule the cosmos due to his being from the line of the one who created it in the first place. Category:Deity Category:Divine Category:Creator Category:Beings Category:Mythology Category:Egyptian Category:Ruling & Principal Deity Category:Sun Deity Category:Creator Deity Category:Ruler Category:Second Generation Primordial